The Book with No Pictures | A Review

I’m a big reader, and I’ve always been a big reader. My mum & dad didn’t really push reading on me, but it always seemed exciting to me, so I suppose they never really had to.
Even though I’m almost 26 I still enjoy the occasional Children’s book, too – mostly because it makes me reminisce about reading The Faraway Tree etc when I was teeny – or about how I wrote a book about myself saving a fox from drowning and winning the nobel peace prize for kindness to animals.

I digress.

I was recently sent a copy of The Book With No Pictures by BJ Novak (Yes, that B.J Novak) and today I’m going to share a short review of one of the simplest but most fun reads I’ve had for a long time.

The idea is really great, actually, and I wish I’d thought of it first.
It’s a book, like the title suggests, with no pictures – for Children.
The catch is that the narrator has to read the whole book aloud – kind of like a bedtime story, but a really really silly one. Check out this video for a better idea…
Complete with just about every audible component that might make a child laugh (noises, toilet humour, gibberish…), it even had me tittering to myself when I read it aloud at my desk one morning before anyone turned up.
There’s something deeply freeing for a grown up to cut loose and read a book in a silly voice – so even though I imagine this will be a wonderful gift to any child who likes to have a laugh at mum or dad’s expense, I also found that it was a pretty great gift to me – the gift of inhibition.

Is that a bit too deep for the review of a children’s book?
Don’t care – buy it (here!) for the little person in your life and shout it out yourself – I’ll bet you won’t regret it!
Better start practicing your Monkey voice…